LDF 2012: Keiichi Matsuda’s Prism is a brilliant, dynamic data version of London

At this year’s London Design Festival, The V&A wanted to open up some of its hidden spaces to public view and use them to host projects which would create unique experiences. For the museum’s flagship LDF offering they have achieved this – and then some.

To access Keiichi Matsuda’s astonishing Prism installation you go through a door in an unlikely corner of the ceramics gallery and climb up a ridiculously steep, narrow spiral staircase. Finally you come to the piece, suspended in the building’s cupola where it glows and hums in the darkness.

It is made up of different panels of Japanese paper onto which are projected visualisations of a whole host of the city’s data – the level of the River Thames, the wind speed and direction, the availability of Boris bikes and even the energy usage at Number 10 Downing Street. “If the Prime Minister puts the kettle on, we’ll know about it,” the artist jokes.

Keiichi worked with a team of volunteer coders and programmers to design how each visualisation should look and there’s a range of different styles on display. And the very nature of the project means that it changes throughout the day, so it looks very different during the rush hour than late at night.

“This tower is already quite science fiction so I liked the idea of this alien creature living up here feeding off all the data,” Keiichi said. “Its eyes and ears are the sensors all over the city drawing everything up here.”

Keiichi Matsuda: Prism (commissioned by Veuve Cliquot)

It’s as fascinating as it is atmospheric but the logistics of setting it up were challenging to say the least. All the material had to be winched from the museum lobby up through the four metre hole which goes into the dome. A team of climbers then worked on setting up a system of aluminium struts as the V&A’s listed status ruled out making any adjustments to the actual building.

The choice of the Japanese paper reflects Keiichi’s interest in craft and his desire to reimagine the word in a cutting-edge context such as a data project. And he also wanted some kind of counterpoint to the data visualisation which comes in the piece’s jaw-dropping finale. Ascending another staircase to the very top of the museum you are presented with an insane panoramic view of the real city, its sprawling mass contrasting with the neat, orderly data on show below.

This is a really thought-provoking piece and will surely be one of the highlights of this year’s festival. Do whatever you can to get a ticket, but just don’t wear high heels…

Keiichi Matsuda: Prism (commissioned by Veuve Cliquot) – the walk up to the piece

You know what we’re like, always going all gaga over pretty colours and GIFS like little typing magpies. But we’re not all about a pretty picture over here at It’s Nice That; and neither is designer Evan Grothjan. While we admit we were initially drawn in by his vivid tones and abstract compositions, it turns out there’s a lot more to his Spaces series than crowd-pleasing aesthetics. Instead, the images form an ongoing investigation into the relationship between space and emotion; something Evan’s been interested in since studying animation as part of his Rhode Island School of Design course.

The current director of the Nottingham Contemporary gallery, Alex Farquharson, has been announced as the new director of Tate Britain. The 45-year-old founded the Nottingham Contemporary in 2009, launching the site with a show of David Hockney’s work from the 1960s. Alex says: “I am delighted to be joining Tate as director of Tate Britain. As the home of 500 years of British art, Tate Britain has a unique and fascinating position in the cultural life of the nation. I look forward to working with a highly skilled and experienced team of curators to share these histories with audiences of all kinds.”

Tate director Nicholas Serota adds: “Alex Farquharson has established Nottingham Contemporary as one of the leading art galleries in the UK. He has created a programme that serves local and national audiences, working closely with artists and reflecting history as well as the present.” Alex will take up the director role in late autumn this year.

It’s the surreal quality and ambiguity in Los Angeles-based Alex G’s paintings that makes them so interesting. Contorted bodies climb, lounge and bend over pastel-coloured boxes, as though they’ve slipped mysteriously out of reality and into a limbo-like world. The uniformity of the figures adds to the peculiarity of the work, all of them with silhouetted hair and features and dressed in white T-shirts and shorts. Looking back through Alex’s work, it’s his current set of paintings, where he’s drifted away from the fantasy-like details and focused more on the on the abstract and obscure, that are strongest. The artist is set to have his first solo show at The Dot Project, London on 8th October, a perfect chance to see the otherworldly details up close.

Artist Charlie Roberts is based in Oslo, but the energy and dynamism of his work belies the tranquility that I can’t help but associate with Norway’s serene landscapes. His past work dealt almost obsessively with collecting remnants of pop culture and laying them out in orderly lines to be documented, but more recently Charlie has shifted towards cool canvases depicting adolescents lazing about, smoking joints on car bonnets, wrapping their long arms around their friends and watching the world go by. It’s a relaxed portrait of young adulthood – all seductive almond eyes, tangled limbs, Nike sportswear and ripped jeans, and it feels like a sweet love letter to this universal but transitory time.

If your long, arduous week has left you looking a bit sickly and slightly grey in colour, Patrick Savile might well be the man with the cure to pep you up for the weekend. A freelance illustrator and designer with experience working for Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Pop magazine populating his back catalogue already, his Personal Zone (real section of his website) is full of abstract, sci-fi-influenced landscapes and textural objects floating bizarrely over fantastical scenes. There – we can see the bright yellow of the screen reflecting off those pallid cheeks already.

After four years of soft detention for Ai Weiwei’s social and political activism, the Chinese authorities have returned the artist’s passport. Ai Weiwei broke the news on Instagram today with a selfie brandishing the travel document. “Today, I picked up my passport,” he wrote in a caption.